Radical Idea?

[takoyaki]

Make LG invite only, or something along those lines. If invite only make invites earn-able. i.e. ug bronze members get 3-5, silver 5-10, or earn-able through activity. Activity earning would be like UG bronze you get 2 for hitting bronze, 1 for every 25-30 non spam posts past that. silver would work similiarly but with easier/more gains.

OR

make non UG unable to do basically anything. people constantly mention scammers or other abusers of policy being members under UG status. simply move everything but general discussion boards, thus making it less easy for all of these problems to occur.

either method seems unlikely to happen, but the latter at least restricts access to important features while still allowing people to at least browse, and discuss, while not leeching, or scamming.

[Souleater]

If we limit all access to parts of the site, people will leave. You need at least a little incentive to stay, and that is what those other sections are for newbies, incentive.

[Taz]

We are trying to get more members and if we put it invite only i don't think we are going to get any.

[takoyaki]

I think i fail to see the need for more members, at least in pure numbers it seems pointless, look at the ban lists, and look at Chads thread about trading, that seems evident that there needs to be a screening of newer members before they can do much

[CL0V3R]

But if we screened those members, less people would be apt to joining. The less people who join, the less activity, with almost no activity the site pretty much dies.
Invite only would only really make us look like elitists anyways. Plus if people wanted in bad enough they'd just start bribing people for invites like what happened when Gmail first came out and it was invite only.
Or users would just get invited then invite themselves over and over and keep making them over and over forever. That would give the mods more work because they'd need to be banning those who make multiple accounts to make more invites.

[takoyaki]

But if we screened those members, less people would be apt to joining. The less people who join, the less activity, with almost no activity the site pretty much dies.
Invite only would only really make us look like elitists anyways. Plus if people wanted in bad enough they'd just start bribing people for invites like what happened when Gmail first came out and it was invite only.
Or users would just get invited then invite themselves over and over and keep making them over and over forever. That would give the mods more work because they'd need to be banning those who make multiple accounts to make more invites.

they already ban multiple accounts, so they already do this. and to the post below yours, people already abuse the system, these ideas are a proposed fix to those issues, even if you just go with a screening sort of thing where nothing other than general talk can be accessed before a set status, that would weed a lot of this out, essentially think of it as a site wide version of chads idea to prevent trading before a certain point